A Merry Hour
by Alchemine
Summary: Little Hecate Hardbroom meets the Puck in the wood for the first time. Prequel to "Well Met By Moonlight." (2017 reboot)


At six years old, Hecate Hardbroom was already dedicated to perfection in the way novice nuns were dedicated to their religion. She had been taught early and often that to make a mistake was to be unworthy, and so when she'd failed, early on Midsummer Eve, to answer a question put to her by her grandmother about the proper uses of mandrake root, her own guilt was the harshest punishment she could have experienced. As usual, that had not stopped Grandmother from adding another punishment on top of it.

 _Get out of my sight and don't come back until bedtime_ , the old woman had said, looming over her small granddaughter like a tower hung about with black velvet and reinforced with whalebone.

 _How will I know when it's bedtime?_ Hecate had asked, anxious not to get anything else wrong, and Grandmother had leant down right into her face, nearly choking her with the funereal scent of lilies, and said, _That's for you to work out, you useless little baggage._

In an attempt to follow the letter of Grandmother's command as well as its spirit, Hecate had gone right out of the house, punctiliously taking her cloak with her in case it should rain, and down to the wood, where she had wandered for a few hours, admiring pretty flowers and interesting stones. At last, growing tired, she found a cosy spot between the exposed roots of a massive oak and sat down to rest. She was gazing up into the oak's branches, hoping to see an owl or a squirrel, when she heard a rustle and glanced back swiftly to find a strange boy standing in front of her, his arms folded and an interested expression on his face.

Among other lessons, Grandmother had taught Hecate to be wary of boys. She leapt up and tried to back away, but collided with the trunk of the tree and had to stop.

"What's this I've found?" The boy leant in to inspect her, and as he drew closer, she saw that he wasn't a boy at all, but a tiny, gnarled man just her size, dressed in a miniature green jacket and brown trousers that looked as if they'd been sewn from flexible bark. "Why, it's a young witch, here in the wood. Well met, witchling." He pressed an oddly long-fingered hand to his forehead and bowed to her, and Hecate returned the gesture and greeting out of ingrained politeness.

"Who are you?" she asked as she straightened up.

The little man opened his mouth as if he were about to launch into a long speech, but then his lips curved in a sly grin and he said, "My name is Robin Goodfellow, witchling, and what is yours?"

"Hecate."

"Ah, they have named you for the Queen of Witches, have they? No false modesty in your family. I like that," Robin said. "But you are my witchling, and so I shall call you. Come and play with me."

"I'm not allowed to play," Hecate said, rather primly.

"Oh? And why is that?"

"I might get dirty, or touch something forbidden, Grandmother says."

"Does she?" Robin twisted his face into a hideous parody of Grandmother's disapproving look, and Hecate smiled in spite of herself. "But the old beldam is not here, and even if she were, there is nothing in the wood that is forbidden for you to touch, for everything in it belongs to my master, and I give you leave on his behalf. And dirt can be wiped away. So come and play with me, witchling, for I am most intolerably bored."

"I don't think I ought to," Hecate demurred, but the longer she looked into the little man's face, with its sharp, pointed features and blackberry eyes, the more she wanted to do as he suggested. Grandmother had said not to come back until bedtime, but she had not said what to do until then, and there was a wicked gleam in Robin's smile that made a little disobedience seem not such a bad thing. Her head was swimming as if she had been spinning in circles; she swayed on her feet, and when he put out his hand to steady her, she gasped.

"You're warm," she said, and he laughed.

"Why should I not be? I am alive, am I not? Now let us play."

Later she would not remember precisely what they had played, only that they had done so for hours and hours, skipping and shouting and running through the wood faster than seemed possible, always keeping to the cool green shadows and out of direct sunlight. Robin knew rhymes she had never heard before, little couplets about moon and stars and water and fire, and sang them in a low, dreamy voice that made her feel she was on the verge of falling asleep. He found sweet-sour berries and mushrooms growing wild and fed them to her one by one; wove a wreath of scented flowers and crowned her with it like a queen. In the midst of it all, there was almost no sense of time passing, and it wasn't until she saw the twilight drawing in that she stopped short and said "Oh—oh, I have to go."

"Why?" Robin cocked his head at her like a curious brown bird.

"It's getting dark," Hecate explained. "Grandmother said to come home at bedtime. I'll be in trouble if I don't. Please, Robin, I have to go home."

"Then you are already there," he said, and giving her a little push, sent her stumbling between two trees and onto the grounds surrounding her own house, where she could see the candles lit, shining through the windows. She turned back, looking frantically for Robin, and then saw him peering out at her from the murky fringes of the wood.

"Can we play together again?" she asked.

"Do you wish to?"

"Oh yes," Hecate said eagerly. "I've never had such a good time, not ever."

Robin grinned, and his mossy teeth somehow shone in the darkness. "Then you shall see me again. Come to the wood and I will find you."

"All right." She started to back away, knowing Grandmother would be waiting. "Only I can't come every day. I have lessons..."

"Come when you please," Robin said. He made a gesture that resembled opening a door, and in a blink he had ducked around the side of his invisible opening and was gone, leaving Hecate alone to dash up the slope toward the house. She expected to be scolded for getting dirty, but somehow despite all their running through brush and brake and brier, her dress and cloak were still spotless. It was almost like magic, she thought, hanging the cloak up on its hook, only she was certain Robin hadn't done any spells...or had he?

Despite her lessons, she had a surprising amount of opportunities to slip away to the wood for the rest of that summer. Normally Grandmother found fault with her all day long, from the way she ate her breakfast to the way her clumsy beginner's potions came out to the noise she made climbing the stairs, but at times it seemed Grandmother had forgot she even lived there. This was a relief for Hecate, not only because it freed her from scrutiny, but because it meant she could spend endless afternoons with Robin, who never seemed to run out of games and tricks to play. As summer wore on toward autumn, she developed a habit of always bringing a small present for him when she visited: he liked sweet things, like honey and apples and biscuits, and she found it was easier than expected to slip them into her pockets and spirit them out of the house.

On the first really chilly day of the year, they were sitting side by side on a fallen tree trunk surrounded by drifts of dead leaves, sharing a chocolate bar she had brought, when he turned to her and asked a question.

"How old are you now, witchling?"

"Seven," Hecate said, and then, overcome by an attack of truthfulness, added, "Well, almost. I have my birthday in a week. It's the day before Hallowe'en."

"A birthday, is it?" Robin popped the last crumb of chocolate into his mouth, licked his fingers—his tongue was brown, like one of the dry leaves, but Hecate was used to that—and clapped his long-fingered hands together. "And a seventh birthday at that. Seven is an important number."

"I know," Hecate said proudly. "Especially for witches."

"You have given me such gifts, witchling. You must have a gift of your own when the time comes. Shall I bring you pearls from the bottom of the sea? Silver moonflowers that only bloom in the twilight? Or perhaps a fox cub to be your pet, and to keep you company when I am not with you?"

"I'd like the fox cub," said Hecate, who thought jewels and flowers were a bit silly.

"Or," Robin said, in a musing voice, "perhaps I might take you to see my home. Would you like that, witchling? It is a beautiful place, like a waking dream that goes on and on forever, and very few witches have seen it."

"Does it take long to get there?" Hecate was charmed by this idea, but mindful of the trouble she would be in if she were away from home too long. Grandmother seemed to be taking unwanted notice of her again lately; she had been punished the previous afternoon for blotting a page when copying out a spell, and the incident was still fresh in her memory.

"On your own, you might search the wood forever and never find it," Robin said, "but when you are with one who knows the way as I do, you may step from here to there and back again in the space of a breath. Think on it, witchling. You would be very happy there with me and my kind, and my master and mistress would be glad to welcome you into our number."

"Who are your master and mistress?" Hecate looked over at him, expecting an answer, but Robin only smiled, revealing the strange, crooked teeth that lay every which way in his mouth, and pulled aside a swath of air to vanish behind it, leaving Hecate alone with a sense of disquiet she couldn't quite explain. Robin was her friend, and she trusted him, but something about the idea of going away with him set off an alarm in her head.

Putting the chocolate wrapper tidily in her pocket, she hopped off the log and went home, wondering how she might find out more about where Robin lived, and whether she could really go there and come back in an afternoon. Grandmother would probably know—she seemed to know everything about everything—but something told Hecate it wasn't a good idea to ask. Instead, she decided to look at the collection of magic books on the shelves in Grandmother's library and see what they had to say. She would be in the most dreadful trouble imaginable if she were caught there, but she had to know.

She slipped into the house, and with held breath, tiptoed down the corridor and into the library, where the thick velvet curtains were drawn and only a single lamp lit the dusty, spicy-smelling dimness. Where should she begin? Grandmother had taught her to read, and she was good at it for her age, but many of the books in the library were written in other languages, and the ones that weren't had fearfully long words in them. After some searching, she found a set of the Encyclopaedia Magica and read over the letters on each volume, wondering if it should be R for Robin or G for Goodfellow. At last she took both, struggling under their weight, and, using a spell she had seen Grandmother employ, floated them over to the table where the lamp sat. There was nothing in the R book, but under G...

"Goodfellow, Robin," she read aloud in a whisper. "A nature sprite, demon, hobgoblin, famous for mis-chi-e-vous...mischievous pranks and tricks." That sounded like Robin to her. "Also known as the Puck, a vassal of Oberon, the Faerie King."

Hecate slammed the book as if the words might leap off the page and manifest in the form of the Faerie King himself. Her heart was racing. She didn't know what a vassal was, but she had been warned against faeries many times. How could she not have realised Robin was one of them? What would Grandmother say if she knew?

 _Grandmother isn't going to find out,_ she thought. It was a rebellious notion for her, and she wondered if Robin's mischief was rubbing off on her and turning her into a wicked little girl. Whether it was or not, she knew she wasn't going to tell. Robin—or should she call him the Puck?—had been her secret all summer long, and he was going to stay that way.

She put the encyclopaedias back and crept out of the library and up to her own bedroom, where she climbed up onto the wide windowsill and gazed out toward the wood. It had been such a beautiful place, full of fun and delight, and now it looked black and terrifying with its tangle of half-bare trees outlined against the sky. She would have to go there again tomorrow and tell the Puck what she had learnt, and then she would say goodbye to him forever. Even knowing what she knew, she didn't want to, but there was no other way. Faeries were dangerous. She was lucky not to have been taken already.

When the next afternoon came and her lessons were finished, she wrapped up a few lumps of sugar she had saved from breakfast, tucked them into her cloak as a farewell gift, and made her way down the hill and into the wood. She had never been able to find the tree where she and Robin had first met again, but she had discovered that if she laid out her offering and waited patiently, he would appear soon enough, no matter where she was. After walking for a bit, she stopped in a clearing with a handy stump in its middle and unfolded her little parcel of sugar, then sat down under the falling leaves and tucked her hands up into her cloak sleeves, with fingers poised in a spell-casting position just in case. She didn't know whether her sort of magic would work on the Puck, and even with Grandmother's teaching, she had only mastered a handful of spells completely, but it was better than nothing.

"Well met, witchling," Robin's voice said, and she looked up with a start. "Ah, you have brought a gift." He scooped up the sugar, popped a lump into his mouth, and stowed the others in one of his myriad pockets. "You are too kind to me. Now tell me, have you thought about my offer? Shall we visit my home for your birthday?"

"I can't go with you," Hecate said miserably. Even with her new knowledge about Robin, he was still her friend, and the idea was still tempting. "I read about you in a book. You're one of the fair folk."

"Yes, and?" The Puck drew his feet up and sat cross-legged atop the stump, balancing himself easily.

"And you steal people away."

"Ah, you wound me, witchling. I have never stolen anyone away. They came with me of their own free will, and so shall you."

Hecate shook her head. "I can't. I won't. I'd never see anyone I know again if I did."

"What do you care for the people you know? Your grandmother is a heartless bitch—"

Hecate knew that word well. It was one that Grandmother herself often applied to other witches she did not like, and it was meant to be an insult.

"That's not a nice thing to say," she informed him.

"She is, and you know she is." The Puck's dark eyes sparkled unpleasantly. "And other children think you cold and strange, do they not? You needn't tell me, witchling. I have seen it in your heart. I have crept into your dreams and seen it there. You deserve better, and with us you shall have it." His voice dropped into a low, soft croon. "You shall sleep on a silken bed, and dine on honeydew, and no one shall ever scold you, or pinch you, or pull your hair and make you cry."

"I _can't_ ," Hecate insisted. "I don't belong in your world. I'm a witch. I have responsibilities."

"What responsibilities have you, witchling?"

"To—to preserve and perfect the craft and carry it on into the next generation," Hecate said, thinking that Grandmother would be pleased she had remembered this part of the Witches' Code word for word.

"There are thousands of witches in the world who can do these things," the Puck observed, "but only one of them is my witchling. Would you deny me your sweet company?"

"Yes," Hecate said fiercely, then wavered. "But maybe not for always. Maybe we can still play sometimes."

"Ah, witchling, you will not wish to play for much longer," the Puck said, and there was regret in his expression. "Little witches grow up into big witches all too soon, and then they have no more interest in tricks and games. Come away with me now, and you shall never grow old like your grandmother. You shall live forever with us."

"I don't want to live forever," Hecate said.

"Then I must leave you," said the Puck, and made to open his invisible door.

"No, wait!"

He turned back. "Have you changed your mind?"

"No—I just wondered—will you ever come back?"

The Puck paused, looking her up and down, and she saw the shimmering glamour that hung about him and wondered how she ever could have thought he was mortal.

"You may always summon me on Midsummer Eve, if you wish," he said, and slipped behind the veil, leaving Hecate alone in the autumn wood, with fallen leaves caught in her hair and a sudden, terrible emptiness in her heart.


End file.
